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>There's no reason to assume that the KJV translators consulted any mss at all. They specifically mentioned "consult[ing] the Translators [and] Commenators, Chaldee, Hebrew, Syrian, Greek, [and]
>Latin, [as well as] the Spanish, French, Italian, [and German]." These were all available in printed editions, except that AFAIK Syriac was first printed in 1645.

Yes, many of the above would be simply recent translations, Spanish, French, etc.

Specifically, considering the dates, what do you think is the reference to the Chaldee and Syrian ? And the Syriac printed edition you are mentioning, would that be a Textus Receptus translation into Syriac, or the Peshitta appearing in a printing ? (Or some sort of Peshitta manuscript or copy, even if partial).

As an aside, where you have [and German] the Preface apparently says Dutch. I do wonder why you made a change there. My understanding is that there was a Dutch edition distinct from the German.

Schmuel

><>

Daniel

>TC was a very minor part of their responsibilites as translators of the KJV.

Understood. I realize that they were not involved in a textcrit endeavor, such as coming up with an eclectic text. (Anyway, some of the principles currently in vogue in textcrit scholarship, such as lectio difficilior, had never yet even been floated for consideration as a textual analysis principle.)

However since so many of the translators were involved in Bible scholarship, it would not be surprising for some of them to be a bit familiar with whatever manuscripts were in the region. So the question is, as before, .. what hand-copied manuscripts were in the region ?

Daniel

> .... they revised the Bishops' Bible (the good one) using the best vocabulary and phraseolgy culled from all previous English translations (many good ones) as well as commentaries as far back as that of Theophilact (for Mark 7:3).

Mark 7:3
For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, except they wash their hands oft,
eat not, holding the tradition of the elders.

That would be a commentator from about 1100, Bulgaria. There were likely early
church writer commentaries as well, a whole nother consideration, especially
since so many of the variants have multiple references in those commentaries.

>< The resulting translation was clearly based heavily on Beza 1598, but according to Scrivener (1884), out of the 252 passages in which these sources differ sufficiently to affect the English rendering, the King James Version agrees with Beza against Stephanus 113 times, with Stephanus against Beza 59 times, and 80 times with Erasmus, or the Complutensian, or the Latin Vulgate against Beza and Stephanus (Scrivener, Authorized Edition of the English Bible, p. 60).

Yes, while a good base, sometimes the Scrivener analysis seems to have
some weaknesses when you go verse to verse.

>I should not that it's a bit more complicated than that; the KJV "follows" various editions of the above editors (mainly just to the extent that they were adopted by earlier translators), and any "Vulgate" reading actually came into the KJV by means of earlier English versions, and ultimately from the Latin translations of Beza (a primary source for the Geneva Bible) Coverdale (a primary source
>for the Great Bible), and Erasmus (a primary source for the Tyndale version). The Rheims NT was the source for some of the English phraseology of the KJV, but I don't know that anyone has ever traced
>any textual readings back to it, nor do I expect anyone to.

Interesting.
So you are indicating a view that they didn't actually have any Vulgate manuscripts per se ?
ie. Latin manuscripts from before the Reformation scholarship directly passed down ?

>I've abandoned the hypothesis that Tyndale drew on Wycliffe's version,

I didn't even know that was a hypothesis :-)

> a statement by Tyndale himself lamenting that he'd had no one to go before him in the job of developing a biblical vocabulary for the English language. Thus it appears he never laid hands on a ms of Wycliffe--and little wonder, as to do so at the time would have endangered both his head and that of its owner. Later, once the Bible was taken off the list of banned books, copies of Wycliffe
>emerged from the shadows, to the point that the introduction of the Bishops' Bible makes mention of the fact that the Bible had been first translated into English a century and a half earlier.

The nouns and verbs, adjectives and adverbs essentially match till the 14th verse
(truth/verity). This would seem to be unlikely if the biblical vocabulary didn't have
some direct or indirect connection.

Yes, but apparently with a fair amount of additional Greek and non-Greek (e.g. Latin, Syriac, Ethiopic) support.
Is it possible that this is one of those cases where the King James Bible differs from the Byzantine Text ?

We understand that the KJB and TR have a number of differences from the Byzantine/Majority, (the TR did use an excellent textual analysis, so on some verses it matches Latin and minority Greek and other sources and common sense, and not the Byzantine readings).

Hi Schmuel, from what I can find out both the Majority text and Stephanus 1550 read as does the KJB. The Byzantine Greek text reads the same as the KJB but the Modern Greek has paraphrased it to "wash to the elbow of the hand". This is interpretation and not strictly a translation.

Notice Matthew Henry's explanation, showing how many disagree over the meaning of the word used here.

They washed their hands oft; they washed them, pygme ; the critics find a great deal of work about that word, some making it to denote the frequency of their washing (so we render it); others think it signifies the pains they took in washing their hands; they washed with great care, they washed their hands to their wrists (so some); they lifted up their hands when they were wet, that the water might run to their elbows.
And maybe the KJB has a few differences from most or all of the Textus Receptus, as we were discussing before. Is this one such verse ?

And Westcott-Hort apparently moved some of the scholarship to "fist" based on the often-absurd "harder reading" concept. The King James Bible folks might have been using a "clearer reading" idea as part of their verse consideration :-)

And the footnote is quite unusual, since it shows they were very familiar with three views, but the use of the term "originall" could be questioned, since it implies that they used the reading they didn't consider "originall". Any thoughts on that ?

Yes, I thought it was a wierd note too. I don't defend the KJB translators. I think they were wrong in many of their personal opinions (just as I am probably wrong in many of mine).

The vast amount of evidence is that pugmee is the correc t reading, it just comes down to what exactly this word means in the context, and here the scholars hold many different views.

If you think about it, the literal meaning doesn't make sense. They "wash with the fist" or "they wash to the fist". If you wash with the fist, you won't hold much water in a fist and you won't get very clean. If you wash to the fist, then you really won't get your hands very clean, because your hand in closed - all you might get is the outside part of the hand.

Now, if you take "with the fist" as being an idiom for "dlilgently" or "with concentrated effort", then one of the meanings of diligently is often or frequently.

We use the word fist in non-literal ways today. He rules with an iron fist - this is not literal, but figurative. Or "They worked the fields hand over fist" - not literally, this would be very a very difficult position to work in all day, but it means to gather something fast and in large quantity.